Shadow Copies reduce the chance of data loss by creating shadow copies of files and/or folders that are stored on network shares at specified intervals. By enabling shadow copies you can keep a set of previous versions of a file/folder that an end user can access through Windows Explorer. End users can transparently recover deleted files, overwritten files and corrupt files without the need to restore files from backup

There are two components that will need to be set up. On the server side you will need to enable shadow copies on shared folders and on the client side you will need to install TWClient.msi, the Previous Versions client. Setting up Shadow Copies on the server side is easy enough, just open up My Computer, right-click the drive that contains the shared folder(s) and select the Shadow Copies tab.

Select the drive in the list of drives and select Enable. When you click OK it will create shadow copies that will be accessible through Windows Explorer. You can edit the schedule and the location of the shadow copies as well, just click on the Settings button to customize the schedule, location, and amount of hard drive space to use. The client side setup is even easier, install TWClient.msi and you are set. The client is located in %systemroot%\System32\Clients\TWClient directory on any server running Windows Server 2003. Once it is installed you can access the previous versions by selecting the Previous Versions tab in the folders properties.

From here you can view a previous copy, copy one to a different location, or restore the file. If you restore a previous version it will overwrite the current version.